But clients of Morgan Stanley have good reasons for Monday’s trading to be left to stand, with the broker buying a net $2.6 million of Whitehaven shares during the 22 minutes from the time the first news report emanating from the fake press release hit the market until the shares went into a trading halt.

Share trades during that period settled yesterday, revealing details of which brokers were buying and who was selling. After netting off buy and sell orders, Morgan Stanley emerges as the clear winner, distantly followed by
Macquarie
which bought a net $343,353 of shares.

Among the losers were clients of Citigroup which sold net $507,317 worth of Whitehaven shares and UBS which sold a net $436,334 shares.

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The Australian Financial Review has learned that Jeremy Buckingham, a NSW Greens MP, called Mr Moylan after his laptop and mobile phone were seized on Tuesday evening and pledged his support.

“I thought it was important that someone in a leadership role rang Jonathan and let him know he was not going to be hung out to dry," Mr Buckingham said.

“We don’t want to see a young idealist man who is desperately worried about coal mining charged and thrown into jail. That would be a disgrace when you have so many corporate criminals escape jail."

Asked what he would say to out-of-pocket Whitehaven investors, Mr Buckingham said they should not be investing in coal companies.

Nationals senator Barnaby Joyce on Thursday weighed in, telling Sky News: “If Christine Milne wants to be taken seriously ... then you just can’t just go out an endorse a mechanism for which a lot of people, pensioners and superannuation funds, in one day lost a lot of money."

Andrew Harrington, an analyst at Patersons Securities, told Sky Business earlier this week that he could tell the press release was a hoax and recommended that clients buy Whitehaven shares. Unfortunately for those clients none of them seem to have taken his advice, with not a single trade executed by Patersons during the critical 22 minutes.

“That shows the influence I have," Mr Harrington joked on Thursday. He said he knew the press release was a fake because he rang the number listed as an ANZ spokesperson and quickly realised it was someone else. Monday’s share trades should not be cancelled, he said. “The market is supposed to be perfectly informed for every micro second of every day. Here the market was reacting to false information and it was quickly corrected.

“It provided a brief window for buying at an artificially low price from trigger-happy investors."